4.3 Crucia’s Claw: October 25

Crucia has gathered her most powerful generals and is ready for battle!

Crucia’s Claw digs in on October 25, 2017!

Here are the key highlights, which we’ll present more in-depth in blogs and livestreams leading up towards launch:

New Tier 2 Raid: Bastion of Steel

Crucia has finally tipped the scales of war against Ahnket. She has assembled her most powerful forces yet in the hopes of destroying Ahnket. The Ascended must work together in an arena-style fight to defeat them so that Crucia does not get the upper hand. Bastion of Steel will provide the best equipment yet to be found in the Celestial Lands for Ascended that are up to the challenge.

New Mage Soul: Mystic Archer

Mystic Archers focus their power in the form of magical arrows fired from their bow. Care should be taken when utilizing the Mystic Archer’s abilities as each offensive spell in their arsenal must be aimed, by either character movement or placing ground-targeted AoEs where the most devastation will ensue.

Get ready to continue the adventures of 4.2 Celestial Storm! On October 25, prevent Crucia from upsetting the balance of power and destroying the Celestial Lands by entering Crucia’s Claw!

The new patch consists of a new 10 man raid and a new soul for mages? Will there be more?

Why a new soul like this out of nowhere? We struggle to balance the current ones! Again timing! There are no signs of balance changes to the exisitng souls but you anounce a new one! No mention of desperately needed systems changes. I hope to the elder gods of the universe that this is not all that is coming. Man....

The new patch consists of a new 10 man raid and a new soul for mages? Will there be more?

There are a lot of new Autumn Harvest costumes arriving, which will be part of 4.3. This kinda mirrors 3.7, which was focused heavily on Summerfest while the team was developing Starfall Prophecy. I imagine they're either deep into the design + implementation phase of a "Fresh Start" challenge server, or something bigger is coming for 4.4. Datamining suggests there are additional things patched in that won't be used immediately at 4.3's launch.

Originally Posted by Ailell

What the heck? What's up with the new (only) soul for Mage, is Mage really THAT bad? :P

During 2 interviews given at Gamescom, Archonix indicated that all new soul packs going forward will contain one soul for a specific calling. Looks like Mage is up first.

There are a lot of new Autumn Harvest costumes arriving, which will be part of 4.3. This kinda mirrors 3.7, which was focused heavily on Summerfest while the team was developing Starfall Prophecy. I imagine they're either deep into the design + implementation phase of a "Fresh Start" challenge server, or something bigger is coming for 4.4. Datamining suggests there are additional things patched in that won't be used immediately at 4.3's launch.

Ignoring the Main game to work on Challenge servers would be a terrible terrible mistake. Its like peter molyneux or something. Constantly announcing random stuff people aren't interested in while ignoring the core game. Focus on Rift, the main game. The house is on fire and everything we own is inside and Trion is talking about a housing development somewhere else. Its madness I Tell you.

There are a lot of new Autumn Harvest costumes arriving, which will be part of 4.3. This kinda mirrors 3.7, which was focused heavily on Summerfest while the team was developing Starfall Prophecy. I imagine they're either deep into the design + implementation phase of a "Fresh Start" challenge server, or something bigger is coming for 4.4. Datamining suggests there are additional things patched in that won't be used immediately at 4.3's launch.

During 2 interviews given at Gamescom, Archonix indicated that all new soul packs going forward will contain one soul for a specific calling. Looks like Mage is up first.

So does it mean that we're getting the needed separate soul purchase system, or are people expected to pay for a pack with just one soul beforehand? Because that's surely a strange decision and a strange expectation to have.

Other than that I too agree that before introducing any new souls (especially paid ones!) it's important to fix the existing ones (and that tiny issue of pvp mentoring because that one is just ridiculous). And this isn't even the case of different people working on different things like wardrobe vs souls, so no reason to say it can be done simultaneously because clearly it cannot.

So does it mean that we're getting the needed separate soul purchase system, or are people expected to pay for a pack with just one soul beforehand? Because that's surely a strange decision and a strange expectation to have.

I am inclined to think so. I hope they're priced appropriately for having one soul vs. 5.

I am inclined to think so. I hope they're priced appropriately for having one soul vs. 5.

I'd be very happy if we got all souls for separate purchases and packs. So a choice to please as many people as possible. I don't play mage, I don't care about a mage soul, but should there be a new cleric soul I'd like to try - I'll gladly buy one. One, not all five. I'm also okay with it being a bit more expensive than each soul in a pack - as long as there's a choice to get them both separately or bundled up. That would be a great thing to have, indeed.

I think the intent is to also spend more time focusing on one soul at a time rather than 5 and taking a lot longer to release all of them. It also allows for what people have been asking for, for a long time and as you already pointed out which is individual soul purchases. Hopefully they'll split up the old ones in the future for the people who only play one class.

Hi I'm all open for new expansions etc but the game doesn't seem finished on the profession side of it. I have all professions at 525 , all marks at max (over 120k artisan marks) and all these new soulbound Matt's from rifts and dungeons, I have thousands of them in my bank what are the for???? Are there new recipes coming out or is it for something else....???

So you give some love to mages and instead of fixing our current useless souls /low DPS, you give us some strange new soul.
Arrows and bow are not a mage thing. Give this to rogues or warriors, and let mages be... you know...spellcasters.
Mages suffer since chloro heals are no more possible in solo specs, but giving us a new soul only able to play in open content is... I don't have words to say what I think of this.

We already have two souls dedicated to survival/open content because you decided they can't be good for anything else : necro and Ele. Adding a third while the whole class is so underperforming is a slap in the face.

strange choice, i mean im sure keyens is already bogged down in work. is he getting help?

now besides all the other class issues, count me as kind of excited. to me mage has always been the most fun class and unlike other classes all the souls we have received have been things which the class lacking which made getting new souls very exciting. i was wondering what the hell kind of new soul they would make for mages.

so im expecting a noncaster caster(please dont let there be cast times for this soul) with this new soul which mages dont currently have. could maybe get some people back to pvp that dont wanna heal or play super gimicky warlock.